


Fire

by Phantom_of_the_library



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Derek Hale Blames Himself, Derek Hale Feels, Derek Hale Feels Guilty, Derek Hale Reflects on Fire, Derek Hale and Fire, Derek Hale is So Done, Gen, Hale Family Feels, Mentioned Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Mentioned Laura Hale, One Shot, The Hale Fire (Teen Wolf)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23717212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_of_the_library/pseuds/Phantom_of_the_library
Summary: Derek is sick of fire and the ruin it causes. Now, Derek is ready for an ocean that can put the fire out and drown him simultaneously. Derek begs for the waves to knock him off his feet and hopefully, in the process, wash him of all his sins. He wants the rain to pour unapologetically from the sky and crash fiercely against the ground.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Paige, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Kate Argent/Derek Hale
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Fire

**Author's Note:**

> An exploration of Derek Hale's thoughts on fire through the years.

When Derek is seven years old, he looks at fire with a sense of awe and curiosity.

His baby sister Cora is lying in their mother’s arms as the whole family are curled up together in the living room. The fireplace is alight with the guard in front, giving the room a warmth which brings peace. Derek listens as the flames crackle and hiss, and watches as they dance almost hypnotically. The reds and oranges blend together perfectly. To Derek, this is what home feels like. It feels like Laura and their father talking animatedly about what she learned at school that day. It feels like a new sibling sleeping comfortably, knowing she’s safe in Talia’s embrace. It feels like Derek and Peter sitting on the floor, in front of the fire, talking about Derek learning Spanish for the first time (which inspires Peter’s tale of his trip to Mexico).

Home to Derek, feels like fire. It’s loud and hard to ignore, but it’s still bright and full of life.

* * *

When Derek is fourteen years old, he looks at fire, for the first time, as something that resembles his guilt.

He’s in the park with some of his friends from school, it’s late enough for no young child and their parents to stop by but early enough for him to stay outside. His friend Jamie had stolen a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his mom before he left and he’s holding them out like some kind of trophy. Derek takes a cigarette from the box in front of him and looks at it solemnly. He can see his parents, uttering their disappointments and how he’s 'supposed to be an example for Cora'. He can see Laura, with her hands on her hips and her head shaking in disgust. He can see his uncle Peter tutting at him mockingly.

Jamie snaps Derek out of his thoughts when he is told to place the cigarette in his mouth. As Derek starts to, he hears a click and a small flame is dancing in front of him. In the fire he can see everything wrong with the picture in front of him and most importantly, he feels the shame that he knows he will bring to his family if he does this. He murmurs an apology before standing up and putting the cigarette in the trash can. With a goodbye, he leaves for the preserve and thinks of his close call. From then on, fire is what Derek links to caution and shame.

He knows now not to play with fire, that if he does, the only thing that will follow will be pain. 

* * *

Derek is fifteen when he likes fire again.

Now, he associates wild flames with passion, the same passion that a certain brunette has when she plays her cello.

Derek can sit and watch Paige for hours, pulling the bow string back and forth and moving her fingers constantly until they make the right sounds. It’s mesmerising and tempting and he just can’t keep himself away from it.

He links fire to the candles he lights when he takes Paige to the park to have a late night picnic one weekend. Her alabaster skin is illuminated in the candlelight and Derek can’t help but grin as he pushes her hair back behind her ear and leans in to kiss her.

Fire is what he feels when he thinks of Paige. Fire is what he knows when he thinks of love. 

* * *

Derek Hale hates fire with a burning sensation by the time he is seventeen.

No longer is it a sign of love, but a symbol of hate. Hate towards werewolves. Hate towards hunters. Hate towards women who prey on innocent, young boys and lure them with their crimson lipstick and blonde, perfectly curled hair. 

Derek hates the smell and the sight of fire. Now, when he smells, he smells that of burning flesh and decaying bodies. No matter where he looks, all he can see is ash and even when he closes his eyes, all he can see is the entirety of his childhood, everything he has ever known and loved, fall apart in front of him. The very being of his existence is torn from him mercilessly.

As he listens to the frantic goings on of New York, the sound of his mother’s screams are overwhelming as he is forced to recall her pleas for her children to leave without her. He can’t stand to hear it anymore, and he thinks back to ten years ago, both confused and disgusted as to how he could possibly love such a monstrous and dangerous thing. Fire is everywhere and he feels like he can’t escape it. It’s in the books he reads, and all the poets compare fire to love, because of course it’s a passionate, wild being, that consumes all in its wake. But it isn’t beautiful, and it isn’t what love should be. Fire is reckless if it isn’t controlled properly. Fire is dangerous and leaves a trail of destruction everywhere you look. No, fire isn’t love.

Derek Hale has seen how threatening fire can truly be, and realises just how right he was at fourteen to link fire with shame and danger. Because that is the aftermath. The shame of letting himself be tricked, and used, and abused. The shame of not telling anyone about anything when he knows that he should have and if he had, then all this pain and suffering he has inflicted on Laura and himself, it wouldn’t exist.

By seventeen, Derek has learned of the danger of letting emotions come before logic and sense. He let the flames envelop him completely until he suffocated from the smoke and now he carries with him a deep, unsettling burden everyday. And still, he can’t bring himself to admit to Laura what he’s done. He can’t get the words to leave his mouth and let her know that she should blame him for all of it. That she should hate him for the monster he is. He doesn’t deserve his sister’s love or any other kind of love. No monster does. From that day on, Derek Hale swears off love until the day he dies. Love is dangerous and it hurts.

When he’s sat in the apartment, waiting for Laura to come back from the store, he realises that what he felt for Kate, it wasn’t love and she definitely didn’t love him. He was manipulated and confused and any idea of love is now tainted. Anything he felt, it wasn’t real. How could it have been? He’s only a dumb teenager who opened the door for all kinds of chaos and more.

* * *

At the age of twenty-two, Derek Hale has lost everything.

The majority of his family are dead, and his eldest sister has been the latest to join them. Uncle Peter is alive, but he’s in a vegetative state, so for the first time in his life, Derek is truly and utterly alone. He sits on the charred wooden floor of the living room. For seven years, the house has been untouched and all that Derek sees, is an echo of his past. It's like a broken record, playing the same, scratched up sounds over and over and it makes Derek want to scream. 

As he looks around, he can almost imagine what the room used to look like. How the two brown leather sofas would face each other, and the coffee table would be placed in between. How the shelves in the walls would be packed with rows upon rows of books, some leather-bound, some paperback. Out of the corner of his eye, Derek sees ghosts of his former life. He sees his mother and father dancing in the living room as he and Laura sit on the sofa, watching with glee.

When he walks through what once used to be the hallway from the front door to the staircase, he remembers a five year old Cora letting go of their mother’s hand and racing to get to Derek as she had returned from a trip to the park. He tries to stop himself before he gets too deep, before the pain and loss gets to a point where he can’t breathe because he’s choking on tears. If he remembers too much it only makes it worse. So a part of Derek, the happy and friendly side of him, is pushed down. He’s let down his walls once and he’s witnessed how stupid of a mistake that was. He forces himself to see the Hale house for what it is; a relic in shambles. Derek is sick of fire and the ruin it causes.

Now, Derek is ready for an ocean that can put the fire out and drown him simultaneously. Derek begs for the waves to knock him off his feet and hopefully, in the process, wash him of all his sins. He wants the rain to pour unapologetically from the sky and crash fiercely against the ground. But Derek Hale isn’t that lucky, because there’s an alpha on the loose biting teenagers and a kid with a buzzcut who when Derek pushes against the wall, has a spark in him that Derek doesn’t want to see set off. He’s seen how important one tiny spark can be and he knows that if this kid, this Stiles is set alight, there’ll be an explosion and Derek can’t go through that again.

No.

Not again.


End file.
